As, thank you for your insight! And please, by all means, diagnose my H for me! I offer him up for your thesis project if you need one!
I know he has fear, depression, I am starting to figure him out.
Whether he can be a good partner for me I have my doubts. But we have 3 children and I am willing to sacrifice my relationship needs for them to have an intact family. At this point. I am not willing to sacrifice all of my needs for the sake of my children, but I do not expect my H to be fully functional. For now I am content that progress is being made. For now my support system of friends, church, and my own ability to manage my emotions are making me less in need of an H who can fulfill my needs. Its a sad reality, but also a positive change.
If H gets his [censored] together tomorrow and is the perfect H for me, who is to say he won't have an accident and be paralyzed and be unable to work (no I am not planning anything- lol- although I am feeling my anger), who is to say I won't? Who is to say we will maintain our health, our strength, our intellect, things can and do happen and the decision to stay with him was based on commitment and not on the condition that he be able to fulfill my needs and be a great partner.
I am in it for the long haul. I am seeing positive changes and I am seeing a very damaged broken man. I am also going to warn my children when they are of dating age to be very very careful to know someone's childhood issues before marrying. To realize that what seems like a sad story of a childhood left behind is a big red flag- and not to walk away from someone with a bad childhood- but to watch them very carefully and get help before problems arise. I guess this applies to everyone, bad or good childhood aside, you never really know.
I have patience, I have faith, I have commitment. I am gaining more and more insight by the day. I wish I knew then what I know now. I would have paid a lot more attention and been more fully in tune with what was unfolding before my eyes. I have grown up a lot from this experience. From what I see, I think H had a big backslide, but now may be caught back up to where he was pre-BD. Not a good place to be, because this where he lost it, but better than in that post BD pit. He seems more logical, more calm. I could have a completely different impression of him 10 minutes from now, I still don't trust him emotionally.
Now to work on how to build resiliency in my children. Because they are going to need it, if H leaves, and they are going to need it in their adult lives. This, I believe, is where H is lacking. He has no resiliency. I believe this applies to other waywards as well. Things get hard, they lose it. That is the difference between them and us. I know, its more complicated than that. But I think that resiliency is the key.
